Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about the spirit of early Christianity. This is actually one of the first messages I ever delivered concerning the early Christians. Years ago, I used to travel and speak on this topic, but that was nearly 15 years ago, and I don't do much traveling and speaking these days. However, when I looked over my notes from 15 years ago, I wondered to what extent I would still agree with what I was saying back then.
Well, I was very pleased to find out that I agree with everything I was saying 15 years ago. The things that I had seen back then about the early church are the things I see today. The difference is that 15 years ago, I was hoping to recreate the early church. That is, let's worship just like they did. Let's hold to the same doctrines. Let's model our church government after their model. And if we do all those things, then we'll end up with the same kind of devotion to Jesus Christ that they had.
However, what God has shown me in these past 15 years is that replicating the early church shouldn't be our primary goal. Instead, we need to be focusing on the kingdom of God, just like they did, and on the king of that kingdom and his Father. What made the early Christians so special was their obedient, love-faith relationship with Jesus Christ. That is where our focus needs to be, not on trying to recreate the early church all over again.
At the same time, there is an enormous amount we can learn from the early Christians because there has never been a period since the second century when the entire church was so on fire for Christ and when the vast majority of Christians were truly what I call kingdom Christians. That is, they lived their lives as citizens of another kingdom. They truly were pilgrims and strangers here on the earth.
So tonight, we're going to be looking at seven characteristics of early Christianity, characteristics that we can learn from today. These seven things are what gave primitive or early Christianity its special ethos or spirit. The first characteristic we're going to talk about is that early Christianity was a Christianity that emphasized lifestyle over doctrine, relationship with Jesus Christ over theology.
And that is perhaps the single largest difference between early Christianity and the type of Christianity that has existed since the time of Constantine. Now, when I use the word Christianity, I'm using it in a very general sense to mean all people who profess to believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior. I'm fully aware that much of what passes for Christianity today is not authentic Christianity. And I should probably also explain what I mean by the word doctrine.
Now, originally, our English word doctrine simply meant teaching. Now, in that original sense of the word, I don't mean that early Christianity necessarily emphasized lifestyle over teaching because so much of their teaching concerned lifestyle. But the word doctrine is very similar to the word doctor. Originally, the word doctor meant a teacher. Today, if you say doctor, most people are going to think you're talking about a physician.
And likewise, today, when someone talks about doctrine, they're normally talking about theology. They're not talking about lifestyle teaching. And when I talk tonight about early Christianity, I'm going to be primarily looking at the church of the second century. Much of what I say would apply to the church of the third century as well, but some things do begin to change as you get into the third century.
Now, of course, the characteristics we'll be discussing tonight apply to the church of the first century as well. The main difference between the church of the first century and the church of the second century is, in the second century, you don't have the apostles around any longer, number one. Number two, in the first century, an enormous amount of the apostles' time and energy was devoted in defining Christian teaching and getting the church established.
And then there was the big issue that occupied the church for its first number of decades on whether or not Gentiles had to come under the law and be circumcised in order to be Christians. By the time you get to the second century, all of that has been worked out. It's no longer an issue. When the church was young, Christianity was something you lived.
In contrast, after the Council of Nicaea, which was 325 AD, and the period of Constantine that was ushered in, Christianity became something primarily that you believed. Being a Christian meant that you gave mental or at least verbal assent to a certain creed or to a certain set of doctrines. When post-Nicene Christians wanted to explain Christianity to pagans, they generally pointed to a set of doctrines. This is what we believe.
In contrast, the Christians of the second century pointed to the Sermon on the Mount, and they said, "This is what we believe." Justin Martyr summed it up very nicely when he said, "Let it be understood that those who are not found living, as Christ taught, are not Christians, even though they profess with the lips the teachings of Christ." In the early second century, a writer gave this description of Christians in his day.
Writing to the king, he said, "Their women, O king, are pure as virgins, and their daughters are modest. Their men keep themselves from every unlawful union and from all uncleanness in the hope of a reward in the world to come. Furthermore, if any of them have male or female slaves or children, out of love towards them, they persuade them to become Christians. When they have done so, they call them brothers without any distinction.
They do not worship strange gods, and they go their way in all modesty and cheerfulness. Falsehood is not found among them, and they love one another. They do not turn away their care from widows, and they deliver the orphan from anyone who treats him harshly. He who has gives to him who has not, and this is done without boasting.
When they see a stranger, they take him into their homes, and they rejoice over him as a very brother, for they do not call themselves brothers after the flesh, but brothers after the Spirit and in God. Whenever one of the poor among them passes from this world, each one of them gives heed to him according to his ability and carefully sees to his burial. And if they hear that one of their number is in prison or afflicted because of the name of Christ, all of them carefully attend to his needs.
If it is possible to redeem him, they set him free. If there are any poor and needy among them, yet they have no spare food to give, they fast for two or three days in order to supply the necessary food to the needy. They follow the commandments of their Christ with much care, living justly and seriously, just as the Lord their God commanded them. Every morning and every hour, they give thanks and praise to God for his loving kindnesses to them. They give thanksgiving to him for their food and drink.
If any righteous man among them passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God. They escort his body as if he were setting out from one place to go to another nearby. And when a child has been born to any of them, they give thanks to God. Yes, in the second century, when Christianity was still young, Christianity affected every facet of a person's life. Clement of Alexandria wrote, "Holding festival in our whole life persuaded that God is present everywhere. We cultivate our fields praising God.
We sail the sea singing hymns. In all the rest of our life, we conduct ourselves according to discipline." Again, he said, "He who sells or buys should not name two prices for what he buys or sells.
Rather, he should state the net price and endeavor to speak the truth." So the Christians were among the first to object to the practice of having to bargain in the marketplace, marking things up to an exorbitant price, and then someone else trying to get it at an exorbitant steal and hopefully finally settling on a fair price. No, they said there should just be one fair price and that be it. Tertullian wrote, "It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us.
They say, 'See how they love one another.' And they are angry with us too because we call each other brothers." Now, the fact that the early Christians emphasized lifestyle over theology was because they maintained an obedient, love-faith relationship with Jesus Christ. When a person is close to Jesus, that person is not drawn to theology. He's drawn to a way of life, a life of love. The things that are important to Jesus become important to him.
Let me just stop and ask you, how often did Jesus talk about theology? Is that what he preached to the crowds? How much theology is there in the Sermon on the Mount? Again, go to Matthew 25 and read what Jesus said there about the criteria he is going to use to separate the sheep from the goats in the last judgment. Does he say even one thing about theology there? No, he only talks about what they did and did not do.
I often hear Bible commentators or so-called Bible scholars talk about Pauline theology or sometimes Peteran theology or Johannan theology. That is, the theologies of Peter and John. But you know, they've not even coined a word for Jesus theology. That's because it's pretty impossible to turn Jesus into a theologian. He talked about a living, loving relationship with people and how we are to live. He didn't give discourses on fine points of theology.
Not only did the early church know nothing about theology from Jesus, they knew nothing about Pauline or Peteran or Johannan theology either because they recognized that these disciples of Christ were just like Christ himself. They didn't focus on theology. No, it was Augustine and other people who created the myth of Paul as a theologian or John as a theologian. The early Christians saw them simply as faithful disciples who walked in the footsteps of their Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, when I say that the early Christians lived their Christianity, this means that among other things, their Christianity made them different from the world around them. Let me read to you just a couple of passages from their writings. These are both from Tertullian. He says, "Even among those who are not of his religion, the Christian is noted for his fidelity." That is, even the pagans recognized that Christians were faithful in their marriage, in their devotion to Jesus Christ, and in their business dealings.
He writes again, "You are accustomed in conversation yourselves to say in disparagement of us, 'Why is so-and-so deceitful when the Christians are so self-denying? Why is he merciless when they are so merciful?' You thus bear your testimony to the fact that such persons do not follow the general characteristic of Christians.
For you ask in the way of a retort how men who are reputed to be Christians could be of such and such a disposition." Yes, because the early Christians were different from the world around them, it meant that the world hated them and thought that they were very peculiar. And this is just as the scripture said it would be.
Jesus has said, "You will be hated by all for my namesake." And Peter had noted, "They think it's strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you." One reason the early Christians could emphasize lifestyle over doctrine was because their doctrines were so simple. Here is an example of a typical statement of faith from the second century. This is from Tertullian. He says, "The rule of faith indeed is altogether one, alone immovable and unchangeable.
The rule is to believe in only one God Almighty, the Creator of the universe and his son Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, raised again the third day from the dead, received in the heavens, sitting now at the right hand of the Father, destined to come to judge the living and the dead through the resurrection of the flesh." That was their statement of faith. What a contrast to what you normally find today if you ask a church for their statement of faith.
Because the early Christians were focusing on loving Jesus Christ and that obedient love relationship with him, they didn't spend their time arguing doctrine like Christians did after the time of Constantine. All you had to believe to be an orthodox Christian in the second century was what is basically called the Apostles' Creed today, what we read from Tertullian there. Now, you were free to believe more if you wanted to. The teachers in the church certainly went into more detail on those things.
I mean, there were explanations that went with the creeds. That's the basis of the whole series I've done on what the early Christians believed. But please don't imagine that you had to believe all of those things in order to be considered an orthodox Christian. Like I say, orthodoxy didn't turn on doctrine. It turned on lifestyle. Actually, the truth is that it's doubtful that the average Christian was even able to go into much detail beyond the statements in the basic Apostles' Creed.
For example, one of the early Christian apologists, Athenagoras, wrote, "Among us, you will find uneducated persons, artisans, and old women. They may be unable in words to prove the benefit of our teaching. However, by their deeds, they demonstrate the benefit arising from their accepting its truth. They do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works. When struck, they do not strike again. When robbed, they do not go to law.
They give to those who ask of them, and they love their neighbors as themselves." As Mark Felix, another early Christian apologist, put it, "We don't speak great things. We live them." Also, in the early church, orthodoxy rarely ever turned on using this word rather than that word. That's because the early Christians didn't try to define things too precisely. They didn't imagine that they could somehow improve on what God had given us in the New Testament. But all that ended with the Council of Nicaea.
That's because Constantine and the bishops who were assembled at that council decided to change the basic creed that the church had held on to for nearly 300 years. And they inserted in it the word homoousios among some other phrases.
Now, if you've listened to my message on what the early Christians believed about the Trinity, you know that I feel that the Nicaean Creed is a good summary of what Christians believed in the first couple of centuries of Christianity about the deity of Christ and the relationship of Christ with his Father. I have no problem using the word homoousios, meaning of the same nature, of the same substance, that Jesus is of the same nature as the Father. They're both divine.
What I have a problem with is taking a word that doesn't ever appear in scripture, doesn't even appear in the writings of the second-century Christians, and it can only be found in a few writings in the third century, and even those are somewhat questionable, and then saying, "If you are a true Christian, you must use this word. And if you refuse to use this word, if you want to substitute some other word for it, then the church condemns you.
It condemns you to eternal death, eternal punishment because you have no part in Christ." Well, see, that's totally different from the ethos and spirit of early Christianity. And that spirit of Nicaea and of the fourth century has pretty well predominated throughout Christianity up through the present day. The majority of Christians who would profess to be Bible-believing Christians, who would profess to hold to the historic Christian faith, they're usually equally picky on, "It's got to be this word.
It's got to be said this way." None of them would ever have the confidence to just put forth the Apostles' Creed and say, "This is what we believe. But if you really want to know what we believe, look at how we live because that's what our Christianity is all about." But now I do want to clear up one thing. There were boundaries to orthodox Christianity.
Today, there's a liberal movement that is trying to say that in the early church, you could believe whatever you wanted to, that there really wasn't such a thing as orthodoxy and heresy, that that's something that someone later made up and then juggled the historical records to make it look like there had been these teachings handed down by the apostles. But that's a complete lie. The historic record is as clear on that as it is on any other point of history.
I mean, there definitely were heretics in the early church, and there's quite a lot of writings against them. But generally speaking, the heretics that they talk about in the second century are groups whose teachings are so far from the New Testament that they're more like a whole new religion, not just a form of Christianity with some errors. I mean, take for example the Gnostics. They taught that it wasn't the God of the New Testament who created man, who created the earth.
Rather, earth was created by this inferior God who was quite different from the God of the New Testament. And therefore, everything he made, everything that's material, including our human bodies, is beyond redemption. But the true God took pity on us and sent us his Son to teach us the truth in contrast to the God of the Old Testament. But because everything material is evil, the Son of God didn't really become human. He only appeared to be human.
And then they had a whole host of deity, these different levels you had to go through once you died, these secret passwords and all of that. Like I say, in so many aspects, it sounds more like a Hindu religion or something. It's not orthodox Christianity with a couple of errors in it. Or take the Ebionites. They were basically Jews who believed Jesus was their promised Messiah. They didn't believe in his divinity. They didn't believe he fulfilled the Mosaic Law.
In other words, they didn't believe anything that's said in the New Testament other than the accounts of his life in the four Gospels. But they rejected all of the statements that he made concerning his divinity, all of the statements that are made in the New Testament about the law being fulfilled. Jesus was simply their human Messiah. So the Ebionites, again, they weren't Christians who just were off on one point here or one point there. They were basically Jews who simply saw Jesus as their human Jewish Messiah.
Those are the kind of heresies that the early Christians were fighting, not little fine points of doctrine. Okay, so that we don't lose track here of what we're doing, remember we're going through seven characteristics of the early church. We've talked about two of them. The first one was a Christianity that emphasized lifestyle over doctrine. The second one was a church of very simple doctrine. Now, the third point I would now want to look at concerns doctrine as well.
And that is one of the things about the doctrines of the early church that I've really come to appreciate in the last 10 years is their whole approach to doctrine. Of course, their basic position was, "We're simply teaching what the apostles handed down to us." So in that respect, they had a huge advantage over us. But you know, we can come to the same doctrines that they had without ever reading even one single one of their writings, just by reading the New Testament alone.
Because what they taught fits exactly what the New Testament says. The problem is that most of us have to first rid ourselves of two of the faulty methodologies that professing Christians have been using ever since the days of Constantine. The first one, which is so common today, in fact, the Reformation, instead of improving things, actually made it worse, is that Christendom today generally ignores Jesus as the primary teacher of Christianity.
Instead, they jump to one of his disciples, usually Paul, and elevate Paul as the great teacher of Christianity. I've seen a lot of Christian reference works that say Christianity was one thing before Paul, and then Paul developed it into this whole different direction and a whole different religion than how it started out. Well, that's absolutely nonsense. But it's easy to see how people would come to that conclusion because Paul is elevated above Jesus.
If Paul seems to say something that contradicts Jesus, nearly all churches today will explain away what Jesus said. They'll say, "Oh, well, that applies only to another dispensation," or, "That doesn't apply to Christians," or, "That's actually part of the Old Testament." I heard one teacher saying that the book of Matthew is not the first book of the New Testament. It's the last book of the Old Testament. But in contrast, the early Christians always started with Jesus. What did Jesus teach?
Because Jesus said, "Call no man Father. Call no man Teacher because you have one Teacher, and that's me." So we had better not set up one of his disciples as the great theologian of Christianity. If Jesus wasn't a theologian, then neither were his apostles. So that's the first corrupt methodology, not beginning with Jesus Christ and looking primarily at what he taught.
The second one is instead of looking at the totality of what the New Testament teaches on a subject, Christians today tend to pull out proof texts from here and there, and then they ignore or explain away any scriptures that don't fit their man-made positions.
As I've said, I think on every one of my messages on the topic of what did the early Christians believe, if a person takes the totality of what the New Testament says on any subject, beginning first with Jesus Christ, and he takes those verses very seriously and very literally, unless the context of the verse makes it clear that it's not meant to be taken literal, if you do that, you'll end up with what the early Christians believed without ever reading their writings. It's all there in the New Testament.
In fact, I haven't found even one exception to that. My study of early Christianity has blessed me in many ways. But one of the most important ways I think it has blessed me is opening my eyes to the fact that proof texting is not the way we go about trying to learn the truth about Christianity. Because all of my life, that's all I had ever known. I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness, and we had a whole list of proof texts there. And when I left them, the other groups I was around had their whole list of proof texts.
And everybody would deny what the other groups' proof texts were saying. And it looked like, "Well, that's how you're supposed to take the Bible, taking out verses here and there and then building a case based on that." But when I came to early Christianity, I found what they taught fits the whole New Testament. There aren't problem verses. It encompasses all of it. And it's been so exciting to discover that all of the doctrines of the faith are right there in the New Testament.
And if we take the totality of the New Testament, we don't even have problem verses. There's nothing we have to explain away. The historic faith is that clear. Okay, the fourth characteristic of the early church I'd like to talk about is that it was a disciplined church. Let me read to you a couple of quotations from Tertullian written near the end of the second century.
He said, "Where the fear of God is, there is seriousness, an honorable and yet thoughtful diligence, an anxious carefulness, and a well-considered admission to the ministry. There is also a safely guarded communion, promotion to leadership after good service, and a scrupulous submission to authority. And there is a devout attendance, a modest gait, a united church, and God in all things." Again, he wrote, "Our discipline carries its own evidence in itself.
We are not betrayed by anything else than our own goodness, just as bad men also become conspicuous by their own evil. For what mark do we exhibit except the prime wisdom that teaches us not to worship the frivolous works of the human hand? Our marks are the temperance by which we abstain from other men's goods, the chastity that we do not even pollute with a look, the compassion that prompts us to help the needy, the truth itself which makes us give offense, and liberty for which we have learned to die.
Whoever wishes to understand who the Christians are must seek these marks for their discovery." You know, this is one place where conventional churches today are almost totally lacking. The typical so-called Bible-believing church today exercises no church discipline whatsoever. About the only time they would ask someone to quit coming is if that person is teaching different doctrines than the pastor and maybe causing division in the church or something like that.
But for other things, for sins that will prevent someone from inheriting the kingdom of God according to what the scriptures say, typically nothing's done. The most prevalent sin in churches today is adultery. That is adultery through divorce and remarriage. And do evangelical and restoration churches discipline members of their church who practice such adultery? Almost never.
In fact, typically, the church will actually perform the marriage ceremony for someone who's divorced his or her spouse and is getting remarried. As I've already mentioned, the early church strongly believed in separation from the world, and their discipline helped to maintain this. Yet at the same time, the early church was an imperfect church. And that's my characteristic number five. And the early church can be contrasted with the Montanist sect that grew up towards the end of the second century.
Now, discipline was beginning to let up just a little bit as you get towards the year 200. And so the rise of the Montanist movement was, in some ways, a reaction to that. But their idea was of an extremely ascetic and rigorous church that went beyond the New Testament in their commandments, that enforced very severe discipline and wouldn't allow forgiveness for serious sins. And even though I don't think the Montanists were all bad, I think there was some merit to their movement.
I would have to say that the historical evidence would indicate their movement was not of God. And I don't mean that the individual Montanists weren't branches on Christ's vine. That's his business, not ours to try to judge at this point in time. But you know, if you really want to be honest and you look at the church as described in the New Testament, it's obvious that the New Testament church was a very imperfect church. And the second-century Christians didn't try to change that.
Now, they did shore up some of the really bad things that were happening. You read the letters to the seven churches in Revelation. And it's obvious that a number of those churches were not disciplined churches. They were allowing some serious wrongdoing to go on. And that seems to have been corrected by the second century. You don't see or hear anything that would indicate that the church any longer anywhere tolerated the Nicolaitans or people who practiced adultery or idolatry or those sort of things.
So they took Jesus' strong counsel to heart. Origen wrote this about the church in his day. He said, "Some persons desire that before the end of the age and before the angels come to remove the wicked from among the righteous, there should not be evil persons of every kind in the dragnet. However, such a person seems not to have understood the scripture, for he desires the impossible.
Therefore, let us not be surprised if, before the removing of the wicked from among the righteous by the angels, we see our gatherings filled with wicked persons.
Let us hope that those who will be cast into the furnace of fire will not be greater in number than the righteous." Now, Origen was referring there to Jesus' parable of the dragnet in Matthew chapter 13, where Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which when it was full, they drew to shore. And they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age.
The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire." So there is a balance that the scriptures teach. On the one hand, there is supposed to be church discipline. Jesus laid that out as to what steps should be taken and when it would be necessary for a person to be put out of the church. And that's discussed in the letters of Paul and John as well. So we should never use the parable of the dragnet as an excuse to not have church discipline.
Actually, Origen's prediction came true long before the end, just a little over a century after he wrote what he did, that at some point in Christian fellowships, the wicked would outnumber the righteous. That was already true before the year 400. Origen had assumed that when things got that bad, the end was right around the corner. Christ was about to step in with his angels and take care of things. But that's not the way it worked out.
The institutional church, bloated with worldly unregenerated people, continued on and on century after century after century. Now, some Christians whose heart was totally with the Lord felt they should stay in that institutional church and try to live a godly life in it and to be a witness to others.
Others said, "No, it's time to leave the church and to start other fellowships where we're not polluted by the ungodliness going on and the false doctrines that are leading to idolatry and making it difficult for people to have a close, personal, obedient love relationship with Christ." And while I respect those who stayed in the church, like Francis of Assisi or Thomas à Kempis, who seemed to have had a close walk with God within the confines of the Roman Catholic Church, I do think groups like the Waldensians did
the right thing in saying, "It's time to leave.
This is Babylon the Great or something like it." And of course, finally, by the 1500s, God allowed the whole church, at least in the West, to break open with the Reformation and the beginning of the Anabaptist movement. You had the same issues in the Eastern Orthodox Church, but there was never a Reformation there. But there were people who left the church and started other groups.
Now, often they had some incorrect doctrines, the ones who did that, but they do seem to have achieved fellowships where the majority of the people had an obedient love faith relationship with Jesus Christ, where there was godliness and holiness and a disciplined church and a church of love and one that was separate from the world.
So again, when I talk about an imperfect church, it's not in the sense of excusing something like the Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox Church or the many, many worldly compromised churches that are around today. I'm saying even in a fellowship that exercises biblical discipline, it's still not going to be a perfect church. The church should not only be a haven for saints, but also a hospital for the spiritually lame. Now, by this, I mean a real hospital.
Today, a lot of churches will say, "Oh, well, you know, the church is supposed to be a hospital, and so we help the sinners and we accept them into our fellowship." Well, that would be well and good if they were doing something to cure the sinners. But typically, churches that mouth that slogan, they do nothing. They have churches that are just full of wickedness. Who ever heard of a hospital where the sick go in and the doctors and nurses in the hospital do nothing to treat them?
And part of the treatment in the church is discipline. I mean, that is one of the major ways that churches are to help sinners through instruction, through personal guidance, and through the exercise of discipline when people are not walking in the way of Christ and are violating serious commandments in the scriptures.
What I see is that churches that claim that they're trying to be hospitals for the sick are really more like a spa where people laden with sins can come and just enjoy a relaxing time and not have to worry about their toes being stepped on. Clement of Alexandria wrote, "The physician is not evil to the sick person because he tells him that he has a fever. For the physician is not the cause of the fever. He only points out the fever.
Likewise, he who reproves is not ill disposed towards him who is diseased in the soul, for he is not the cause of the transgressions on him. He only reveals the sins that are there." So we're really falling down on the job if our church isn't doing that, if it's not revealing sin through the teaching from the pulpit and the pastoring in the church. Clement also wrote, "If one must censure, it is necessary also to rebuke, for it is time to wound the apathetic soul.
I don't mean to wound it mortally, but salutarily, securing exemption from everlasting death by a little pain." It's not an act of love to let sin just go on, to say nothing about it because you don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. You're not showing any love for them.
They're not going to appreciate it a hundred years from now when they've lost out on eternal life that you, as a preacher, were afraid to say anything or that as a church, you allowed such conduct that was so contrary to the spirit of Christ to go on without ever being rebuked. So when we create churches today where members can just openly violate the specific commandments of Jesus and his apostles, and yet nothing is done, we're very far from primitive Christianity, from New Testament Christianity.
On the other hand, we're also far from early Christianity when we try to create perfectionist utopias or when we, as individuals, refuse to fellowship with any other Christians outside our family because they don't meet our standards. For the past 15 years, my family and I have been very careful where we fellowship because I have no interest in being part of a worldly compromising church. And yet we've always been able to find fellowship somewhere. Christ still has his church on earth.
There are still plenty of new branches growing on his vine every year. So there's something terribly wrong when we come to the conclusion that we and our family constitute the last true Christians on earth or that our congregation constitutes the entire church of Christ on this planet. When we do that, we're basically saying that all of the other branches on Jesus' vine have already been cut off by the Father and that we and a handful of others like us are the only ones left. What Phariseeism! What pride!
Jesus chose to give us an imperfect church, a disciplined church, but not a perfectionist utopia. And when I talk about his church, I'm not referring to institutions. I'm talking about all of the people who are branches on his vine. This is the church. This is what constitutes the church.
Now, if we refuse to have fellowship with any of these other branches on his vine, we're basically saying, "Jesus, your church just isn't good enough for me." And you know, if we're too good for his church, then we're too good for Jesus. And he doesn't need us on his vine. A sixth characteristic of the early church is that it was a unified worldwide church. In the second century, there was only one church.
And by that, I don't mean that there were thousands of competing sects, denominations, and churches like we have today and that the church was composed of all of this conglomeration of competing divisions. Nor do I mean that one of those competing sects claimed to be the one church and it alone constituted Christianity. Now, what I mean is that all of the tens of thousands of individual congregations around the globe made up one composite church.
Clement of Alexandria, writing about the year 195, said, "The preeminence of the church is its oneness. It is the basis of union. In this, it surpasses all things and has nothing like or equal to itself." He was contrasting it to, for example, human governments and countries. Irenaeus, writing about the year 180, said, "Although dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, the church has received this faith from the apostles and their disciples." And he goes on to explain the basic creed.
And he says, "The church received this preaching and this faith. Although she is scattered throughout the whole world, yet she carefully preserves it as if she occupied only one house. She also believes these points just as if she had only one soul and one and the same heart. She proclaims these things, teaches them, and hands them down with perfect harmony as if she possessed only one mouth. For although the languages of the world are different, yet the meaning of the tradition is one and the same.
For the churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, neither do those in Spain or Gaul or in the East, in Egypt, Libya, or in the central regions of the world." Tertullian wrote, "The churches, although they are so many and so great, comprise but the one primitive church of the apostles from which they all spring. In this way, all are primitive," by primitive meaning original, "and all are apostolic.
And they are all proved to be one in unity by their peaceful communion, their title of brotherhood, and by their bond of hospitality, privileges that no other rule directs than the one tradition of the self-same mystery." Now, when they talk about the tradition, they're talking about the composite teachings that were handed down by the apostles. And that oneness is the one thing that Christians have never been able to duplicate since.
It always amazes me how quickly and easily so many Christians just brush off the second-century church like all those dumbbells. They didn't know anything. Yeah, well, then tell me how they were able to remain one church even though they were scattered throughout such a huge region from down in Africa up to Britain, across Europe, into the Middle East, into the Persian Empire, down into India, and yet they remained one church.
By the end of the second century, the church may have been comprised of a million members or more. And I can think of a lot of churches today that number only a fraction of that amount, and yet they're divided into dozens of little competing groups. Now, most of the congregations in the first and second century were very small, meeting in homes, meeting in rented upper rooms, and these different little fellowships throughout a city comprised the one church in that city.
So when Paul wrote his letter, for example, to the Romans, you shouldn't picture in your mind that there was this one huge congregation in Rome that he was writing to. No, during the New Testament period and during the second century, the church in Rome consisted of a large number of separate house churches or churches that met in upper rooms above stores, for example. And it was that way in Antioch and all of the other cities.
For example, I want to read to you the brief dialogue between Justin Martyr and Rusticus, who was the Roman prefect before whom Justin had been brought to trial. And this was shortly before he was executed. We read this account. Rusticus, the prefect, said, "Where do you assemble?" Justin replied, "Where each one chooses and can. For do you fancy that we all meet in the very same place? Not so, because the God of the Christians is not circumscribed by any place, but being invisible, he fills heaven and earth.
So he is worshiped and glorified by the faithful everywhere." Rusticus, the prefect, said, "Tell me then where you assemble or into what place do you collect your followers?" Justin replied, "I live above one Martinus at the Timotinean Bath. And during the whole time I have lived in Rome, I am unaware of any other meeting than this." Now, Justin wasn't giving the authorities any further information than they already knew.
Apparently, there was a small church that met in the upper room where he lived above this bath. Once Justin was arrested, then the congregation meeting in that room would have immediately found another home or another room to meet in.
And the fact that Christians didn't have huge church buildings and temples was one of the reasons why the Romans were never able to wipe out the Christians anywhere, including in the cities, because they met in dozens or even hundreds of different places, and hardly any of them knew the whereabouts of the meeting places outside of the one that they attended.
So even if you tortured a Christian and this person's faith wasn't strong enough and they recanted and I'll tell you everything you want to know, they wouldn't have known where all of the meetings were. So again, when Paul talked about the church in Rome or the church in Antioch, he wasn't talking about one congregation, but many. And yet they comprised the one church in that city.
Now, today there are a lot of well-meaning Christians who meet in home fellowships or perhaps in rented buildings, and they call themselves the church in Crawford, Texas, for example, or something like that. Their intent is, "Oh, well, we only want to use a biblical name for our fellowship, so we'll use a name like the church in Rome, but since we're not in Rome, we'll call it the church in Crawford, Texas." Well, they're using a biblical term, but they're using it in a very unbiblical manner.
Although, again, I realize it's innocent on their part. Because when we start a Christian fellowship somewhere, even if we are an extra committed group of really radical Christians for Christ, we don't constitute the church in Crawford, Texas, or anywhere else. We're only part of that church. The church is comprised of all of the Christians in that town or city. And we indeed are Pharisaical if we imagine that we and our little group are the only Christians in that town.
Nevertheless, even though the early Christians met in so many different places and were scattered throughout the known civilized world, the church was unified in that all of these individual congregations taught the same basic creed and held to the same basic Christian lifestyle. As Irenaeus explained, "But the path of those belonging to the church encircles the whole world as possessing the sure tradition from the apostles.
It enables us to see that the faith of all is one and the same, for all receive one and the same God the Father. All believe in the same dispensation regarding the incarnation of the Son of God. All are cognizant of the same gift of the Spirit and are familiar with the same commandments. All preserve the same form of ecclesiastical constitution and expect the same advent of the Lord. All await the same salvation of the complete man, that is, the soul and body.
And undoubtedly, the preaching of the church is true and steadfast in which one and the same way of salvation is shown throughout the whole world, for the light of God is entrusted to her." Now, part of their secret for being able to remain one body was the fact that their statement of faith or creed was so very basic and simple.
It's when we try to define things more precisely than they're defined in scripture and to enlarge on what scripture says that we then end up with differing statements of faith, and the church is necessarily splintered because we don't all believe the same thing. You certainly had variety of viewpoints on many topics in the early church, but they didn't make all of these peripheral issues part of their statement of faith.
It remained basic, so basic that the only way you could deny it would be if you didn't believe the New Testament at all. The early church also held to one discipline. If your local congregation excommunicated you, you couldn't simply skip over to another congregation on the other side of town or in a nearby town and be received in communion there. You see, the early church didn't allow unbaptized persons either to receive communion or even to be present during the time that the church celebrated communion.
Instead, when the sermon was over, all of the unbaptized were cordially invited to leave the meeting. Now, if you were already a baptized believer and you had just moved to that location from somewhere else, you would not be admitted to the communion of this new congregation unless you brought with you letters of communion from your previous church.
This would be just a handwritten letter from the elders or bishop of that church stating that David Bercot is not under church discipline and is admitted to our communion here in Crawford, Texas, or wherever. So if you were excommunicated by your congregation, you were excommunicated from the entire church of God. You couldn't just go somewhere else.
I guess the only way you could do it would be dishonestly, that is, going to a congregation and pretending to be a new believer and then having them baptize you and accept you into their communion. But that would be such a dishonest and wicked thing that no doubt God would see to it that you would be found out. Now, I realize that churches like the Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox often claim that they have the same thing, the same unity that the early church had. But no, it's not the same.
For one thing, they don't have one church worldwide. You've got two competing communions there. And until just a few decades ago, they had both anathemized each other and condemned the members of the opposing church to everlasting punishment. But the even bigger difference was that the unity of the early church was a unity brought about by the Holy Spirit. Irenaeus wrote, "Where the church is, there is the Spirit of God.
And where the Spirit of God is, there is the church and every kind of grace." So the early Christian churches were unified without being part of an earthly organization or hierarchy. In the second-century church, there was no organized structure beyond the local congregation. And yet the early Christians could genuinely speak of one church. Now, this is in sharp contrast with what I'll call man-made religious institutions that are set up much the same way that human governments are.
I'm talking about like the Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox or various sects and cults like Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses brag about their unity. And they are truly united. They all believe the same thing, but it's not a unity of the Holy Spirit. You have no choice but to all believe the same thing because the doctrine is handed down by the Watchtower Society in Brooklyn, New York, and everybody has to abide by it. Everybody has to believe the same thing or they are put out of the church.
Well, see, that's a man-made unity, not a unity of the Holy Spirit. And same way with the Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox. You've got a hierarchy from the pope or from the patriarch of Constantinople on down, and everybody has to be obedient to whoever is above them. That's man-made unity. It's not the unity of the Holy Spirit. What's more, the early Christian church was entirely separated from any human governments.
Even as late as the fourth century, one of the statements in a work called the Apostolic Constitution says, "If any bishop uses the rulers of this world and by their means comes to be a bishop of a church, let him be deprived, that is, of his position and suspended together with all who have communion with him." That all changed shortly after Constantine.
Before the fourth century was over with, it was a normal thing for the Roman emperor or some other Roman authority to be appointing bishops in cities, particularly the major cities. It was the Roman emperors who convened every one of the so-called seven ecumenical councils. And this continued on basically up to the time of the Reformation that it was the kings who decided who the bishops would be in most places.
And the institutional churches that were supported by the state used the state authorities to eradicate any fellowships that weren't part of the institutional church. So I mean, it's no big thing to say, "Oh, look how united we are," when you use the human governments to bring about that unity to persecute and put to death people who say anything different. That's unity, but that's man-made unity. It counts for nothing.
The last characteristic of the early church that I want to talk about is that it was a growing church. One of the basic aspects of Christianity or of the kingdom of God is that it can't be kept secret. It's got to be proclaimed. It must continue to bring in new subjects, new branches to be on this vine. Whenever a group of Christians are silenced, whenever they lose interest in witnessing, they begin to deteriorate spiritually.
It's like a stream of water that suddenly becomes stagnant after a while; algae begins growing and clogs it up, and it becomes brackish and smelly. Well, stagnant Christianity is no better. And the early church was not stagnant. It was a rapidly growing movement. And yet, surprisingly, there was no organized evangelism. There were no missionary societies, and I'm not necessarily condemning them. I'm just saying this is the way it was. There were no big revival meetings.
Nobody whose name you could even point to and say, "Well, this person was a big evangelist in the second century." There isn't even one name that you could bring up. And yet the church was growing and growing and growing.
As Clement of Alexandria said, "The whole world, along with Athens and Greece, has already become the domain of the word." Tertullian told the Romans, "We are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place among you: cities, islands, fortresses, towns, marketplaces, the very camps, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum.
We've left you nothing but the temples of your gods." Now, by that quotation, Tertullian wasn't saying that some of the senators were Christians because his other writings show that that would have been inconsistent with Christianity, but rather that Christianity had reached the senate, either the wives of the senators or their slaves or servants, or perhaps some of them had been converted and left the senate.
Tertullian said again, "If such multitudes of men were to break away from you and take themselves to some remote corner of the world, why the very loss of so many citizens would cover the empire with shame, no matter what sort of people they were? For now, it is the immense number of Christians that make your enemies so few, for almost all the inhabitants of your various cities are followers of Christ." It's an incredible statement to make. This was in the year 197.
Now, most scholars today feel like Tertullian was using what's known as hyperbole. He was deliberately exaggerating it, and it would be understood that way by the Roman authorities who were reading his work. And yet there must have been a core truth to it, or it would have destroyed his whole defense of Christianity that he was making. Again, he said, "The more often we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow. The blood of Christians is seed.
For who that contemplates it is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it, who after inquiry does not embrace our doctrines." And again, he says, "Day after day, indeed, you groan over the increasing number of Christians. Your constant cry is that the state is beset by us. You groan that Christians are in your fields, your camps, and in your islands.
You grieve over it as a calamity that each sex, every age, in short, every rank is passing over from you to us." And yet this was not a Christianity of easy believism. Becoming a Christian was taking a descendance upon yourself. And as I've said before, it was a disciplined church that you were entering into. So even a church that practices strict discipline can still be a vibrant, growing church. The second-century Christians prove that.
One final quote from Tertullian, he says, "Upon whom else have the universal nations believed but upon the Christ who has already come? For whom have the nations believed? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, those who inhabit Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, and all other nations. By this time, the name of Christ has reached the manifold confines of the Moors, all the limits of Spain, the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons, inaccessible to the Romans but subjugated to Christ.
Furthermore, there are Germans, Scythians, and persons of many remote nations and provinces and islands, many to us unknown and which we can scarcely enumerate. In all these places, the name of Christ who has already come reigns. Christ's name is extending everywhere, believed everywhere, worshiped by all the above-numerated nations, and is reigning everywhere." And yet, as I said, there was no organized evangelism programs. They didn't even have literature like we do. What was the secret?
Every Christian witnessed to people around him, witnessed to people at work, in the marketplace, to neighbors, etc. This is what fueled the growth of Christianity: the courage of the martyrs, the exceptional lifestyle of the Christians that made them so different from the world around them. All of these things were the causes for the rapid growth of the early church in the second century. Well, in conclusion, let's review again these seven characteristics of early Christianity that we've talked about.
The first one was that it was a Christianity that emphasized lifestyle over doctrine, that emphasized an obedient love relationship with Jesus Christ over theology. Number two, it was a church of simple doctrine. The second-century church wasn't split apart by doctrinal disputes because their doctrine was so simple, a basic creed that we know today as the Apostles' Creed. Number three, the early church was a church who took their doctrine from the totality of the New Testament.
Their beliefs weren't based on proof texts, grabbing scriptures here and there, but rather they were based on what the whole summation of the New Testament teaches, beginning with Jesus Christ. Number four, we talked about how the early church was a disciplined church. You couldn't just break the commandments of Jesus Christ and flaunt it and still be welcome in church. At the same time, number five, we saw how the early church was an imperfect church. It was not a collection of perfect people.
People made mistakes. People stumbled. But the church extended forgiveness to those who were repentant, unlike what some of the perfectionist groups like the Montanists were wanting to do. Number six, we talked about how the early church was a united single church. There was just one church in the second century. I mean, yes, there were heretical groups like the Gnostics, etc. And then towards the close of the century, you had the Montanists. But probably 99% of all Orthodox Christians were part of that one body.
And finally, number seven, we talked about how the early church was a growing church. It wasn't dead. It was alive. And all of the powers of Satan couldn't keep it back. Now, have we talked about these things because these are some pie-in-the-sky ideals that we can never duplicate today? No, this is the way every church should be. This is how the church should be today. Now, the one exception is the unity that no one of us can accomplish on our own.
But you know, as a church, we can have a mindset that ties us to other believing Christians, others who have an obedient love relationship with Christ, that we acknowledge them and look at them as brothers and sisters, as fellow branches on the vine. Or we can have a sectarian spirit that doesn't want to have any interaction with anybody else who doesn't do things just the way we do. But all of the other characteristics are things that right now any congregation can practice.
Because what we see in the second century is no different from what we see in the first century in the New Testament. This is how Christianity is supposed to act. This is what the church is supposed to be like. And God is still calling us today to return to the pattern that was set down by the apostles.